a pair of dull scissors and the yellow light
by misguideddreamer
Summary: dark!bonnie and ripper!stefan...picks up after season 4 finale


_A pair of dull scissors and the yellow light_

_(written for the Stefonnie week prompt- Stefan and Bonnie going dark)_

.

.

.

Bonnie waits with herself, sitting on the floor with the dirt and guttering candles, watching her body decay until the very last candle goes out.

Sometimes Grams comes and sits with her and tells her of Bonnie's childhood and Abby, beautiful Abby whose laugh Grams still hears on good days, the little girl who filled her whole world. She watches Bonnie tracing patterns on the floor with her forever-green fingernails and has the grace to turn away when Bonnie tries to speak but can't form any words.

Today she's alone; she doesn't quite understand how time works in this place with its shifting realities that should not exist. Something in her can't bear to find Caroline and Elena, a little bitterness growing inside her that should not be allowed to fester. Bonnie gulps and scrapes her fingers on the cold stone floor, imaging the grating screech her fingernails should make and drawing a blank.

"I'm not here," she whispers to the stagnant air, because imagining the cold stone is not the same as actually feeling it, and she's _terrified _of forgetting. "Bonnie Bennett does not exist."

"God," Kol says, flopping down next to her as if it's his house, "I hoped that the new generation of Salem witches would be just as fearsome as the last ones."

He's been creeping up wherever she is recently and sometimes she lets him stay, because she needs something to stop her from spiralling into tar black thoughts and his wit is usually the perfect thing to jolt her awake.

Not today; today Bonnie turns to face him and wishes she could just punch him and make him leave. She stands; Kol does the same with a groan and follows her into the night, the two of them stealing as silently through the darkness like the ghosts that they are.

"Come on, love," he says, and he sound exactly like Klaus. _Except cleverer, _a voice in her head whispers. "Would you really like to spend eternity alone?"

Bonnie whirls to face him, green eyes narrowed and hands on hips, ready for a fight. She misses the glee that flits across Kol's face because he finally got a reaction, one with actual emotion behind it as opposed to the silence he is used to.

She pauses. "-but I'm not the lonely one here, am I?"

The words fall from her lips, encased in a honeyed tone, and Bonnie purses her lips just the tiniest bit when he falters for a split second, eyes edged with mean girl steel that she hasn't had a chance to use this year.

Kol laughs as if she's just said the funniest thing in the world and she shakes her head and walks away, leaving him in the trees with only his mind for company. She wishes she was in the ground, six feet under and surrounded by worms and unable to formulate a single coherent thought.

.

.

.

The bark's rough against her back where she's sitting, but she can't feel a thing. Bonnie leans her head back and gulps back the _waterfall _rising inside her, imagines the feel of Jeremy's arms around her and the warm coming home smell everyone in Elena's family has always had.

"-Bonnie?" Her eyes snap up and she thinks she's dreaming, but Matt's here, with his wide blue eyes and her heart leaps- _he can't be here, he can't be dead_- and then she notices the heavy ring on his first finger. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm dead," Matt's face crumples and his hands are shaking when he reaches for her, blue eyes already watering and she can't hold it in any longer.

"I'm dead," Bonnie repeats and it's like she's only just realised it herself, as if the months of sitting here in the dirt and watching her skin fall of her bones have not been real, only a dream. "I'm dead."

She falls apart in his arms, beautiful and brilliant and powerful Bonnie reduced to nothing but a pile of crying teenager, and _she's dead. _

"It's not okay." He whispers, lips pressed into the crown of her head, moving almost soundlessly. His tears are warm when they fall onto her hair, and his arms are warm around her.

She doesn't ever want him to leave.

Matt doesn't pull away from her, only holds her tighter even though he's beginning to fade, and she can't feel him any more and it only makes the tears fall faster and faster and Bonnie's clinging onto his shirt until she can't feel the blue plaid under her fingertips any more.

"This is not your ending." Matt promises her in his quarterback voice as he leaves her in the trees, and Bonnie can't stop shaking. She's left staring at thin air with watering eyes and she hiccups, rubbing her eyes furiously and turns away.

"It turns to anger soon enough," A cool voice says in her ear, and when Bonnie looks at Kol, he's so close strands of her hair are caught on his sweater.

Her eyes flutter closed and she waits for him to walk away; he doesn't. Instead, his hand moves to hold her wrist and she rests her head onto his chest and keeps her eyes closed. Bonnie tells herself she deserves comfort, even if it is from a psychopath.

.

.

.

Bonnie doesn't know who she's expecting to see, but Stefan's at the bottom of her list. He left town around the same time as she died, ready to leave Damon and Elena and Klaus and what was pretty much enough misery to last anyone a hundred lifetimes.

He arrives next to where she's sitting, watching the sun rise over the river. He is skin and bones, swollen and pale and bloated and Bonnie watches as he heals himself.

"Stefan?" She cries, and she can't help but feel a sinking in the pit of her stomach. "Why are you dead?"

He pushes himself onto his knees and she runs to him, struggling to find grip on the loose stones beneath her feet.

"I'm Silas' doppelganger," Bonnie's fingers brush over the matted, bloodied flesh of his torn cheeks and she notes that he is freezing to the touch. The realization of where he's been all of this time makes her stomach roll and she wraps her arms around him and watches the tears cloud his eyes before he shuts his eyelids.

"Hold on," She presses her forehead and echoes Matt. "This is not your ending."

(_Bonnie_, Stefan screams when he's back in his grave, fangs elongating as he tries to rip the nails out of his coffin and succeeds in ripping his nails instead. He feels the blood drip from his wounds as they heal, the darkness completely engulfing him within it's grasp. He's completely helpless. _Bonnie. _He whispers aloud, ignoring the cold slide of water into his mouth. _Hold on.__)_

Stefan dies every eighth hour. Bonnie finds herself waiting for him, standing on the edge lake with Kol behind her, waiting until the moment when Stefan will appear, doubled over with pain, and Kol will slip away into the trees before Stefan can see him.

She whispers memories into his sopping hair, tries her best to warm him up before he leaves her again. Bonnie presses a kiss to her forehead in a kind of desperation to feel something, no matter what it is.

.

.

.

"Fuck," His fingers press into her hips and she's crushed into his chest and the tree at her back. Bonnie finds she can't form a single coherent thought while his lips are at her throat, sucking the skin there as if he's trying to make a hickey that will actually stay.

She grabs him by the chin and forces him up to meet her eyes, the smirk on his face all the ammunition she needs to push him off her.

He collapses on the forest floor next to her, the very picture of nonchalance as he inches closer to her, the rustling of the leaves the sound she chooses to focus on.

"Do you know you look prettiest right after you've been kissed? When you're gasping for air you haven't quite figured out that you don't need?"

Kol drags his lips across her shoulder, peppering kisses on the soft skin there and inhaling her scent. Bonnie knows this: he knows where to make her squirm, knows how to ignite her with one look.

In other words, he knows what Jeremy doesn't.

Bonnie Bennett fucks _him _in the woods, with the kind of rush she hasn't experienced since she last cast a spell. There's power in her body, thrumming against her heart and fighting to get out. Even dead, she's too good for him, she knows that. She knows it and he knows it and he treats her like a goddess, every move reverent when he touches her.

The scent of death hangs in the air after they finish, and she leaves him lying in the wood looking at the stars, creeping back to the lake to meet Stefan.

_This is not your ending, _she tells herself, feeling the crumble of dead leaves under her feet. Kol is temporary. He doesn't mean anything to her.

Bonnie wonders if he knows that.

.

.

.

Stefan stops coming. It happens abruptly, one day he comes and the other, he doesn't. Bonnie feels his loss keenly- giving someone else hope gave her the means to hold onto herself. Most days, now, she spends at Gram's feet, wary of the other witches who don't want to talk to her.

Grams says a lot of things, a lot of pretty words that all have the same meaning; a mantra of _holdonholdonholdon. _Bonnie smiles as best she can but it's not like she has any other option, really. This place she is stuck is a waiting room, but she cannot move forwards and cannot go back. It's an awful kind of helplessness, the knowledge that this will be the rest of her life.

Bonnie spends two nights away from town by the lake, sitting listening to the rise and fall of the water in the hope that Stefan will appear. _Selfish,_ she thinks, because he might be out of his watery grave and she'd rather he was out than being tortured in the worst way.

"Don't you want to see?" Kol asks her, and she doesn't even bother turning around to look at him and see what he wants. There's an uneasiness about them now- he doesn't know where he stands and she wants to pretend that they never had sex.

Bonnie shakes her head but pushes herself off the tree she is leaning against and makes her way towards town anyway, Kol at her back.

The darkness is quiet as they cut through it, silent save for the rustling of the leaves. Bonnie feels as though she should be cold, yet doesn't feel the breeze as it ripples the leaves on the trees. She wonders if this is how it is for Caroline and Elena, the constant worry that one day they will wake up and won't remember how macaroni and cheese tasted, and they'll never be able to recall it.

Some days she wishes she could have been turned. At least then, she could have made the choice not to transition, and died peacefully after completely surpassing the hell that is the Other Side.

Kol stops abruptly and she crashes into his back, surprised to find his features have melted into something that resembles respect.

And in front of him there is a goddess, appeared without the slightest sound. Bonnie looks at Qetsiyah with something that comes out as a breathy gasp, unable to believe that the figure that stands in front of her is her ancestor, cloaked in gold with braids to her waist, eyes slanted and lips full. She looks as though she could crush the world between two of her fingers; she probably could.

And Bonnie knows then, she could be that, if she let go of the ties that bound her, she could be a goddess.

Qetsiyah looks at her unsmiling and Bonnie forces her spine to straighten.

Her voice, when it comes, is hard and unforgiving. "You will not waste this chance."

Bonnie opens her mouth to justify herself-

-and is instead confronted with blackness beneath her lids and the feel of warm blood coating her hands before she falls.

.

.

.

When she wakes, it is to a bright white light. Bonnie's first thought is of Grams on the Other Side with the witches, watching her get the second chance none of them did. She wonders if they feel resentment.

She makes herself promise: _I will not waste the power in my veins. I will be a goddess. I will be larger than life. I will not waste myself. I will not waste my life. _

Bonnie Bennett rises from the ground once more, a goddess forged in the blood of her ancestors.

If she tries hard enough, she can sense Kol watching her, smirk playing on his boyish face.

And then there is the gentlest brush of fingertips behind her, and Bonnie turns to find Stefan watching her, blue eyes inscrutable as he gazes down at her. "Come on," he says, and takes her hand.

"Where are you taking me?" She asks, curling her fingers around the cool breadth of his own hand. Bonnie thinks of Elena and Caroline, who had no idea about her death to begin with, and feels the familiar sparks of resentment fly through her. Stefan gives her hand a reassuring squeeze, and when she turns to look at him, she finds the barest hint of a smile touching his lips.

"Hurts, doesn't it?"

Bonnie takes a deep breath and shakes her head. "I'm angry," She says, clenching her jaw and drawing herself up to her full height. "But my Grams always used to tell me one thing. "

"Oh?" Stefan says, one eyebrow raised, both of them ignorant to the looks they are receiving as they walk through the town square, hand in hand.

"Don't get mad; get even."

They share a smile, and both of them know where they will go next.

.

.

.

The study is dark and perfectly organised. Bonnie would expect nothing less, she muses with a smile, from Elijah Mikaelson. Next to her, Stefan pushes his hands further into his leather jacket. Bonnie barely reaches his shoulder even with her favourite heeled boots on, but one look at Elijah tells her that he's the one she's looking at. She's the one with the power here.

"Miss Bennett," Elijah says smoothly, rising from his chair and adjusting his jacket with a forced smile. "Pleasure."

Bonnie merely inclines her head and steps a little closer, crossing her hands behind her back.

"Stefan." She smiles at Elijah and waits for Stefan to step back and lock the door. They've been building up to this for a week, a week of driving and driving and making plans and the unbearable itch of the need to feel Original blood on her fingers.

"I'm sure we can discuss this-" Elijah begins, but doesn't have a chance to finish because her hand comes out to slap him. The thud echoes through the room and she watches the anger grow in his eyes.

"Don't make me angry." Bonnie raises her eyebrows and runs one finger over the red nailpolish on her fingertips, wondering if he truly believes she is scared of him.

"Or how about," She starts with saccharine sweetness, stepping the tiniest bit closer to him with a smile. "I _do _make you angry, and that way this fight is a little bit more fun for me?"

She sees his hand coming and ducks quite easily, the only thing running through her mind the need to make this man pay. Bonnie searches her mind to try and find Quetsiyah's spirit, balling her hands into fists when she realises that this is what they all want.

In the corner, Stefan shifts. Bonnie shoots him a warning look and sends Elijah flying with a flick of her wrist.

.

.

.

"One down," he says with a smile when they're finished, both of them slumped on the floor of the hotel room, "Two to go."

Bonnie grins and examines her hands, the rough feel of cracked blood somehow comforting against her skin. She rests her head onto Stefan's shoulder and smiles. "There's blood in my hair," She informs him when his hand comes to tangle in her matted locks.

"I should cut it," She thinks aloud, and the next second she's reappeared with a pair of dull scissors.

Stefan doesn't even look surprised; he just takes them off hair and starts to detangle her hair. Bonnie grins and allows her head to fall back, the feeling of absolute power washing over her. Elijah is safely desiccated, she thinks with a triumphant smile, somewhere in the pacific ocean where he won't be found for more than a millennium.

But they made him suffer, for what he did. You can't back out of a deal with a Bennett Witch and walk away unscathed. And Klaus and Rebekah are next.

"We did it," Stefan whispers, stubble brushing against her earlobe. "Finally."

Bonnie's struck by a thought just as he's finishing cutting her hair, and she turns to face him, shifting her body round in the crevice of his legs. "Have you turned it off?" She asks, struck by the thought of Stefan's face and mind a blank slate.

Hers to do with as she pleases.

He waits for a moment before answering, looping his arms gently around her waist until their foreheads are touching. "I think we both have," Stefan says, "But not with each other."

Bonnie doesn't debate the details of his theory, just shrugs and goes back to thinking about what she's going to do with Klaus when she finds him. Stefan's fingers play absentmindedly on the bare back of her neck exposed by the choppy layers of short hair Bonnie's left with and Bonnie can pinpoint the exact moment his gaze falls to her lips.

She smiles.

.

.

.

Klaus has her pinned to the concrete wall, fingers curled around her throat with bared teeth. Bonnie can't find it within herself to tremble; green eyes meet blue and there is a clashing point where their two will struggle. Stefan's still outside, depositing Rebekah's body in her coffin. Bonnie meets his bared teeth and smiles at Klaus even though he's choking her and she can't breathe. _I'll give it two seconds, _she thinks, before she flings him off her with the full force of her magic.

Bonnie closes her eyes and feel the familiar pull of magic wash over her.

It's taken her seconds to recuperate this time; barely ten minutes have gone by since it was Rebekah writhing in pain in front of her. If she tries hard enough, she can feel Quetsiyah's approving gaze fall onto her. She zones into the sound of Stefan's footsteps coming up the hallway, and misses the sound of Klaus stirring from where he lies unconscious, slumped against the wall.

Later, she will kick herself for being so stupid when Klaus slams her into the wall with his body, effectively winding her so she can't touch her powers.

"Not so smart now, are we?" His eyes glitter madly when he looks down at her, large hands pinning her to the wall. Bonnie sucks in all the air she can and tries to knee him in the stomach.

_Close your eyes, _she tells herself gently, _Calm down. _

She needs to be calm to access her magic, Bonnie knows. But her heart's thumping so fast that surely Stefan must be able to hear it and he will come, that much she knows for certain.

"Get the fuck off her!" He shouts, bursting through the door and sending it bouncing off it's hinges. Bonnie smiles as the weight of the Original hybrid is lifted off her.

"I thought you had it under control!" Stefan says, one arm curled around Klaus' throat, and Bonnie raises an eyebrow.

"I do," She spits, and sends a powerful aneurysm Klaus's way in order to prove her competence.

She lets him slide the stake into Klaus' body, watching the sense of peace overtake him finally, after years of watching and waiting. Bonnie wipes the blood off her hands with a triumphant smile, kicking his lifeless body with one heeled boot.

"We should celebrate," Stefan says and she giggles madly as he spins her around. "We did it."

"We did it," Bonnie echoes, and slams her lips into his, wrapping her legs around his waist.

.

.

.

They fall into a disjointed pattern of killing sprees and fucking, and Bonnie can't say she's complaining. She finds Qetsiyah's grimoire and the next thing she knows, she's the most powerful witch on earth. "I keep the balance," She says to Stefan, and he only smiles at her. He is her right hand man, hers to do with as she pleases.

"No one will ever abuse a witch again," She decides, and dishes out justice to every vampire that ever did.

"I'll help you kill them," Stefan whispers, curling his arms around her waist and kissing the smooth column of her neck. "Every last one of them."

**FIN**

_a/n written for Stefonnie appreciation week :)_


End file.
